wrinkle is excessive or not. Don’t count the wrinkles. The most common mistake during the assessment is the counting and accept maximum 3 wrinkles. It is very famous rumor about shar pei. Look for wrinkles inside the triangle. “Cheek-Elbow-Tail”. Everything out of this trinagle is too much. So what should we do? The Breeders have went on with the tendencies that have been made by the majority of judges in Europe, with good results at the dog shows. They’ve bred clean bodies without any wrinkles. On the other side, the Breeders who are trying to do this are also losing the typical wrinkles the dog should have in their heads, something that is completely understandable, because the university in Barcelona has made a study organized by Lluis Ferrer that states “ mucinosis is what generates excess of hyaluronic acid in the skin of Shar-Peis and this is what makes their characteristic wrinkles”. There is no way of generating mucinosis in just one determined area. Andrew Brace in one of his articles, talked about how important it would be for breeders in the UK do have an open vision and look for dogs outside the country in order to improve the lines, with better results in their breeding. When I try to apply this in my breed, if I would base my breeding only in the European style off Shar Pei which is completely clean of wrinkles, in a few years we would find ourselves in a very complicated situation, as we would find ourselves going to the completely opposite direction. However, importing a dog from outside Europe could help us to go back to the beginning and it could help with our breeding program, although at the dog show world it would probably be a very questionable dog, as happens with all the breeds that have many 310
Best in Show Magazine
different breed standards. But in this case we are talking about a breed that has only one standard although the dogs look completely different. Personally, I would like to continue applying the words of Carlos Renau: “Quality has no nationality!” I think of how many times this fantastic dogs of this breed are not winning as they should at the dog shows for having the typical characteristics that make it special, by a judge who prefers not to understand the words without excessive wrinkling or thickening and making his decisions whether they are healthy or not, and prefers to directly think that if the dog is wrinkled he is not healthy. I think it is so easy to breed dogs without wrinkles, but to breed dogs with a good structure and the correct movement takes Generations. I think of all the judges during these years who have told me that the dogs should not be judged by their defects, but by their virtues. I think of all the times people have asked me what breed do you have and when I answered Shar-Pei, as I said in the beginning of this article oh, I imagine the perception of that person and he’s thinking of one single word, Wrinkle. And then I remember all the unique characteristics of Shar-Pei, which must be found in the dog that I think must represent this breed.